


One More Sunrise

by Shattering



Category: Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 19:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6622666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shattering/pseuds/Shattering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he tries to recover from Sherlock's suicide, John Watson starts to experience strange, unnatural things happening at the flat, things that make him doubt his sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> **Please note that I haven't used Archive Warnings. Please also note the genres. Possible triggers.**
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> Beta read by Lohis.

**One.**

_The abandoned house is illuminated by harsh grey daylight and the body of a thirty-something male is lying face down on the wooden floor of the living room._

_Three men stand around the corpse._

_One of the men kicks the body around to its back. All the skin visible is scarred by ugly open gashes, like burn-marks and patches of peeled-off skin._

_"So it has really happened," the second man says, staring down at the body._

_The first man looks quickly at the third member of the team. "Any ideas where he might have run off to?"_

_The third man frowns at the corpse. "I do not know his specific location. I can only suspect he is attempting to acquire another temporary vessel to continue the apocalypse and the hunt for his true vessel."_

_The second man shifts uneasily, looking at his companions. "So for a short while he's out of the game, then? Is there anything we could do to use it to get the upper hand?"_

_The third man stares at the ground with a grim frown still on his face. "There might be something. I must investigate."_

_Then he disappears with a quiet fluttering sound._

_There's a short silence before the first man huffs in annoyance._

_"I hate it when he does that."_

 

It is raining in London.

The sky has the colour of an ugly concrete wall, a tired hue of grey that makes you sigh sombrely just by looking at it. There is a slight drizzle falling from the sky, just that annoying amount of rain that makes people consider whether or not they are bothered to dig up their umbrellas or just endure it.

Many people already have their brollies opened and protecting them from the summer rain.

John Watson does not.

He stands there in the drizzling rain, waiting for the traffic light for pedestrians to turn green.

Cars roar past – fashionable new passenger cars, occasional buses, quite a few black cabs. His fellow commuters stand impatiently at the side of the street with him.  
The rain grows stronger. John Watson doesn't care.

He could get to the flat faster via public transport, he knows, but he doesn't like buses (they are always late) or the Underground (always full of people and he has absolutely no desire to crawl there with hordes of other commuters anxious to get moving).

He doesn't like cabs either. Not anymore. Not when there is always an oppressive lack of a certain presence beside him, a screaming absence of rapid speaking and deductions and angry tapping on smartphone and just the _emptiness_ of that simple feeling of companionship.

The light turns green. He briskly crosses the street.

It is still raining. The sky has the colour of dead skin.

 

Greg's uncharacteristically hesitant voice fills the room.

_"Hullo John, how are you doing? I mean – damn it – uh, are you okay, mate? Just, well, you haven't been returning my calls and though I know you probably don't want to hear a thing about me right now I just, you know, got a little worried. So, um, if you could just send me a text or... yeah. What now...? (muffled speaking) Sorry, I have to go now. Anyway, I hope you're doing better."_

John deletes the voicemail. And the next three too without even listening to them.

 

He is still staying at Baker Street.

In the beginning it was nearly impossible for him to live there. All the _stuff_ Sherlock had left behind, just lying around the flat like they were unaware that their owner would never return. The science equipment in the kitchen, the violin lying by the sofa, the pack of nicotine patches on the table. It was like the sleuth's possessions were emitting an oppressive aura that crawled around the flat, stained the walls and the furniture and the very being of the building.

Then Mrs. Hudson and he had packed off the science equipment and got rid of the experiments. The kitchen had been squeaky clean since then.

At the time John had hated it. Still does. Now the flat smells nearly sterile, like a hospital.

No matter how hard it was to stay, it was downright impossible to leave. He couldn't lose it yet. The flat felt like the only thing still tying his current nightmarish existence to his life Before. If he moved into some cramped yet empty flat further away from the city, it would be like watching the last traces of his former life evaporating into thin air.

Later on he nearly changed his mind. He even started packing his things. Then he just – stopped, torn between the urge to leave and the yearning to stay.

He stayed. For now. And now half of his books are neatly in cardboard boxes in the corner of his room.

Ella thinks staying was a bad choice. It probably was.

 

It is raining again. The _Don't walk_ light burning bloody red.

The therapy session has once more felt totally, utterly pointless. He is still visiting the psychiatrist –of course he is, it has still been just about a month and he knows that quitting the sessions now will be a Bit Not Good (after all, he is aware of the whole "doctors are the worst patients" –saying). He also suspects a certain bastard playing the puppet master in the British Government is still monitoring his comings and goings and will immediately alert a bunch of people if John is to suddenly cease continuing the therapy. People he has zero desire to see right now.

It still doesn't change the fact that the hours spent with Ella feel like a terrible waste of time and energy. He _hates_ it, he realized a while back, hates to sit there and endure her probing and questions and neutrally sympathetic face.

He is bitter and annoyed about the fact that most patients probably feel just the same while in therapy after such a trauma.

He doesn't even know whether Ella believes what the press is still saying or not. He has his doubts though. There was something in her eyes when he had asked about it from her. Sadness bordering pity.

Or maybe he is just paranoid.

He scoffs to himself.

The traffic light turns green.

 

One more night spent at the surgery. One more mundane yet busy night. That is all he needs, a busy job demanding his full concentration. So that time will fly and his mind will be occupied and hopefully he will be tired enough to just collapse into bed and sleep a dreamless night till noon.

He's sauntering down the street, slowly approaching the door with the glimmering letters of 221B. It's late and the street is quiet. The sky is covered with brownish clouds.

His leg isn't aching, not really. There is still something in it, like a shadow of stiffness. He briefly wonders if it's possible to have a psychosomatic pain _of_ a psychosomatic pain. A phantom ache from a pain that wasn't really there in the first place.

He stops by the right door and fishes his keys from the depths of his pocket.  
A gust of wind blows down the street. It feels like it goes straight through his jacket and into his bones.

The streetlight flickers and dies.

His gaze snaps up and he turns to rake his eyes over the street. There is nothing there, nobody in sight, not even an alley cat wandering around. Across the street an open window is banging against its frame. The noise echoes around the otherwise silent streets.

He sees nothing out of place, though it still feels like there was something lurking there, just outside the range of the streetlights.

He slowly turns back to the door and manages to open it. Before he pulls it closed once more he takes one more glance at the night.

Nothing out of order.

But still, there is something in the air, something indescribable, a chilling breath that wraps around his limbs and chest.

He closes the door and walks up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson isn't home, he knows. She's visiting her sister who is ill. He knows she didn't want to leave him alone but he had assured her he would be fine.

The cold feeling remains, following him up the stairs and into the flat and to the kitchen where he once more forces himself to make just one cup of tea.

An hour later he sits in front of the telly, the empty cup of tea on the sofa table. Only when the TV flickers and starts to show a grey-white mess he realizes he has no idea what he has been watching, because he hasn't _really_ been watching anything. He wonders if he is tired enough to go to bed without staying awake for a couple of hours. He isn't sure. He doesn't want to take the risk.

The TV flickers again and shuts down completely. So does the lamp in the corner, after a few dying flashes. He is left in the dark.

He stands up and walks to the windows. The orange light of the streetlights slips past the curtains, bringing some light into the otherwise gloomy flat.  
He walks to the lamp in the corner and tries in vain to switch it on. The TV, too, stays black.

He ends up standing in the middle of the living room, trying to understand the source of his unexplainable sense of uneasiness.

In the end, he decides to retreat into his bedroom.

 

He hasn't bothered to look at his alarm clock in a long time. It feels like he has been lying there in the darkness of his room for several nights already, and the sunrise just refuses to come. In reality, it cannot have been any more than a few hours – at most.

He stares at the ceiling and tries to think of nothing.

He wonders if he should move out from Baker Street. It would probably be for the best. Hard, sure, but maybe he then could begin to actually sleep his nights instead of laying awake for hours and hours before finally succumbing into restless slumber.  
He has a feeling tomorrow morning he'll once more decide he'll stay a little longer. 

That's how the cycle goes.

Then he hears it.

The violin.

Beautiful notes emitting from downstairs, reaching the stairs and slithering through his door. Melancholic, trembling notes wrapping around each other in the air and forming the most heartbreaking melody mankind has ever had a chance to hear.  
It takes a while for John to realize he's nearly hyperventilating.

He sits up on the bed, back stiff and eyes wide as he stares into the dark and listens to the notes drag on, one after another.

He tries to wake up, because this _has_ to be a dream, there is no other option. He hasn't heard those beautiful melodies for so long and he _knows_ he never will again, and still the unmistakeable sounds of the violin are very real and clear in the otherwise utterly silent house.

Oh God. He must be hallucinating. There's no other way.

Or maybe...or maybe it's a miracle and if he rushes downstairs he will find his friend there, alive and okay and playing his beloved instrument as so many times before.  
After that thought enters his mind he cannot help but stagger up and out into the hallway. Although he knows he must be dreaming because this is just the type of dream he's had for the past month, he just has to be sure...

He stomps downstairs and barges into the living room. It's dark and empty. The music that was present just seconds ago in the echoing hallway is now gone like it was never there.

He flexes his fingers as he stands rigidly in the middle of the room that is still faintly lit up by the streetlights worming their glow inside.

Then he hears it again, the soft notes dancing in the air. He whirls around. The bedroom. The other bedroom at the back of the kitchen. He must be there.  
He quickly strides through the kitchen and reaches for the closed door he hasn't opened for weeks.

It's like his feet suddenly freeze to the floor as he stops dead on his tracks just before the door. He stares down at the floor.

There's blood coming from under the door, slowly trickling down to the kitchen until it's not just a small drip but a freaking _stream_ , flowing thickly towards him.

He dimly realizes he's walking backwards, shaking his head and swallowing up panicked shouts, drowning the grim, melancholic wails of the alluring violin.

He closes his eyes and stands hunched between the kitchen and the living room, his shoulders trembling.

When he dares to look up the blood has disappeared. So has the haunting violin.

He escapes up to his room, locks the door and sits on his bed till dawn.

 

Next day he arrives to the surgery tired and looking like he hasn't slept since spring. It really feels like he hasn't.

Sarah comes to talk to him during the coffee break. She is worried, he knows and she asks if he's okay.

_Of course I'm fine_ , he wants to say. _Just bloody becoming insane, but that's fine._

She looks at him with pity disguised as sympathy and then, very carefully asks if it is the best choice of action to continue working if he's clearly not feeling fell.

"I am feeling well," he argues curtly. "Just had coffee too late, nothing serious."

Damn. Sherlock would probably insult him for weeks for such an obvious lie.

Sarah knows it's a lie but she nods. He tells her he'll be better tomorrow, really.

 

Evening arrives too quickly.

He's again in the flat, sitting in his armchair and drinking a glass of scotch (just one, mind you, he's not about to turn into his sister anytime soon). The TV isn't working again, and the lights flicker. He thinks about calling to the electricity company tomorrow and asking them about it.

He doesn't want to go to sleep.

Maybe he'll just sit here until the morning comes. That's a very bad plan, he knows but he doesn't want to return to his room.

And if he stays here for the night, maybe the music doesn't return at all. Or maybe he'll catch a glimpse of the violinist himself. He doesn't know which of the options he wishes for.

He sighs and stands up, planning to take the empty glass to the kitchen

His eyes flicker to the skull on the mantelpiece. It has a crack on the brow.

It is bleeding.

There are small trickles of blood dripping from the crack on the bony rim, trickling over the empty eye socket and down the smirking teeth and onto the mantelpiece and to the floor.

The glass drops from his numb fingers and shatters onto the floor.

He picks up the shards the next morning when he finally comes down from his bedroom. The skull is once more flawless.

 

The next day is grey and rainy. At work, Sarah looks at him suspiciously but doesn't say anything. He is very thankful for that.

He nearly dreads to return to the flat. That is the only place he feels like he is truly losing his mind. But he doesn't know how to do anything else so hours later he is once again walking up the stairs to the flat. Mrs. Hudson is still away.

That night he goes to bed at eleven, much earlier than usual. Tonight, he decides, he'll get a good night's sleep and not doubt his sanity once.

An hour later he descends to the living room to sleep on the couch.

Two hours later he wakes up to the feeling of someone else in the flat. _In_ the living room.

He opens his eyes.

Sherlock is sitting in his armchair.

 

**Two.**

The living room is gloomy like every night. The orange light coming from outside is like a glow of frozen flames.

John is still lying on his side on the couch, face towards the room. There is a figure sitting on the other armchair.

John stares. Sherlock smiles at him.

"Hello John," he says, his voice unusually soft.

John stares. He tries to speak but no sound makes it out.

Sherlock continues to smile at him, a small smile that somehow looks very unfamiliar on his very familiar face. There's blood on his skin, on his brow and over his eye and on his neck. His eyes are very pale and bright.

"You're among the exceptional ones," the sleuth says and smiles, just a bit. The blood dribbles down his jaw.

John closes his eyes and draws in a shuddering breath. When he opens his eyes his cheeks are wet and Sherlock is gone.

 

Greg calls him the next day. John stares at his ringing phone for a while before finally answering. It tells how shaky he actually feels.

"Yes?" he says. He can't bring himself to be any more polite than that.

"John? Hello!" Greg sounds a bit baffled that John is actually accepting to speak with him.

"Hello Greg," he says wearily. He glances at the clock. He still has time before his next patient will enter.

"How have you been?" Greg asks, his voice a bit tentative, like he's carefully testing whether John would actually answer the questions honestly.

He will be disappointed.

_Of course I'm fine, I'm just peachy, expect I saw Sherlock last night and he talked to me and that isn't the only crazy thing that has happened in the last few days and I think I'm going insane._

"Fine, just fine," he says.

"That's good, good," Greg says though his tone clearly has a suspicious echo in it.

The phone call ends soon after that. Neither of them really knows how to carry on the conversation. In the end John bails out by appealing to work. Greg apologises hurriedly for taking his time and they disconnect.

John sits in silence for a while, playing with his phone.

That night he returns to the flat like a zombie, dragging his feet up the stairs and into the living room.

He's more than tired, he feels like his brain works on autopilot. He goes to the kitchen and makes tea and sits on his armchair and the TV isn't working and he wonders when the hell he really did began to lose the remains of his sanity.

 

He falls asleep on the armchair. When he wakes up his back and neck are killing him. However, the aching pain is soon forgotten as his eyes settle on the armchair next to his.

Sherlock is once more sitting there, clad in his usual fine clothing and curly dark hair looking black in the darkness of the room.

There's still blood on his face.

"Evening John," he says.

John doesn't say anything for a long time. Instead he closed his eyes and breathes. When he opens them again Sherlock is still sitting in front of him, a patient smile on his face, like he knows exactly what he is trying to do and is waiting for him to snap out of it.

John slowly stands up. "You're not Sherlock," he says warily.

The not-Sherlock looks at him with a small melancholic smile. "I'm not."

"What are you, then?" John's eyes flicker over the room. Everything looks normal. Is he dreaming?

The familiar stranger stands up too, slowly and turns slightly to face him properly.  
"I am an angel," he says. "My name is Lucifer."

John laughs aloud then. Probably the stress, he reasons. Sherlock's doppelganger looks at him patiently.

"I'm not the type to visit the church every week," John says after growing serious again, "but even I know that a fellow called 'Lucifer' doesn't play for the angelic team."

Sherlock (because he still cannot stop thinking about him as Sherlock, no matter how he knows that _thing_ in front of him is not his deceased friend. Because Sherlock is just that. Dead.) tilts his head just minutely. The small smile doesn't leave his face.

"But I _am_ an angel. Cast away from heaven but an angel nonetheless," Sherlock-lookalike says and takes a step closer. John straightens his back, easily adopting his military pose.

"An angel. Right. Right." He lets out another bark of laughter. "You're saying you're the devil, then. This is just great. This is _magnificent._ "

The man calling himself Lucifer tilts his head again. "You're not going crazy," he says.

"Of course I am. I am asleep. Or hallucinating. That equals: I'm going nuts. So now shoo, I'd like to go crazy by myself, thank you very much."

"You are asleep, but only because it's the only way I can reach you."

John rubs his face. "And you're looking like my dead best friend _why_ , again?"

Sherlock-not-Sherlock just smiles. "I have my reasons."

John flexes his fingers. "You are not real."

"If I were created by your imagination, shouldn't you be able to dispel me?"

"I'm a doctor, not a psychologist but I still know that's not how it works."

"As you wish. However, this all is meaningless, this chatter of ours. There is a reason for why I’m here," Lucifer says and the grey eyes bore deep into John's. The ex-army doctor hates the familiarity of those eyes.

"Okay, whatever you are, an angel or the devil or a hallucination, what exactly do you _want_?" John's voice is exhausted and resigned. The dark flat feels surreal, out of time. Like he can't even remember what it is like when the sun is up and the sky is bright and he is working a normal day at the surgery.

"I need a favour from you," Lucifer says. "I need to ask you a question and I need you to answer me yes."

John takes in a deep breath and fixes the other man (or creature, or hallucination, or _whatever_ ) a steady glare. "Okay, if I play along for a moment and pretend I'm not going crazy. Then you'd be the bloody _devil_. Why the _hell_ would I want to help you?" Maybe he has schizophrenia. That would explain so much. All the freaky hallucinations and insomnia. He figures there are _tons_ of people out there in the world who hallucinate the devil coming to strike deals with them.

Lucifer looks at him with patronizing eyes. The sight is so _wrong_ , because it hadn't been an unusual expression for Sherlock, but it still looks like it doesn't really fit, like there's something truly condescending behind it all now and though Sherlock sometimes scoffed at the whole humanity it had never been directed on _John_. Not like _that_.

"I might be real but it doesn't mean everything they say about me is true. What you have heard people say about the devil... That is only one point of view to look at things." Lucifer tilts his head once again and continues with the same quiet tone: "I was cast out because I began to think on my own. To question the order of things around me." He lets out a small sigh. "Isn't that what you humans regard as basic rights? Would you condemn that action in any other human being?"

John arches his eyebrow. "You know, there's two ways to do that 'only one point of view' –trick."

Lucifer smiles a bit. _Sherlock_ smiles a bit. John feels bile threatening to rise up his throat.

"You are a doctor and a soldier, John," he says. "You should be the one to know there are no black and white in the world. Good and evil are relative."

"In most cases, yes," John grounds out, thinking of a certain criminal mastermind. "But I'm pretty sure not always."

The grey eyes narrow. John finds himself swallowing but he refuses to back down.

"What about your friend, then? Was that only _relatively_ bad what happened to him?"

John stiffens. His eyes go unfocused for a moment before he shakes his head minutely and glares at Lucifer. "Shut up. You know nothing of him."

Lucifer smiles sadly. "But I do. I know what your journalists and press wrote about him. I know who did that to him. I know what he was forced to do."

John realizes he isn't breathing and draws in a shaky breath that feels like it catches coarsely somewhere in his throat.

"What did the police do? Accuse him for crimes he hadn't done because it was easier to them. And the newspapers? They got a good juicy story. What about the commonwealth? They turned their backs to him at the second when it became fashionable."

John closes his eyes and almost bows his head. "And what," he says quietly, "does this all have to do with you?"

Sherlock-Lucifer tilts his head. "And now he's gone," he continues as if he hasn't heard John speak at all, "and no one really cares, and why would they? He was just a murderer after all, a kidnapper of children."

"I'd advise you to shut up _right now_."

"Why? Because I'm telling the truth? Not the truth about him, mind you, but how he was mistreated."

John frowns, his head starting to ache more and more. He raises his hands up to his face and presses them against his eyes.

"Mistreated by you, too."

John's head snaps up. " _What?_ "

Sherlock's indefinable eyes bore into his. "You know he was innocent, and what have you done to set things straight?"

"What have I – I have done bloody much!" John shouts, white blinding rage raising its head inside him. "I did _everything_ I could to make them see he was innocent."

Lucifer smiles. It's not a nice sight and looks wrong on Sherlock's features. "Just like you're doing right now, hmm? Doing everything you can to make things right, to cleanse his reputation. Because to me it looks much more like you are doing absolutely nothing besides simply existing."

"I – I tried but they wouldn't _listen_ , and –"

"So you ceased trying."

"Shut up!" he screams because the words hurt too much, tearing something open deep in his gut and twisting the wound anew. "I tried and I failed," he says, now much quieter, and his legs suddenly feel weak and he collapses to his armchair. He buries his face into his hands and takes deep breaths.

Lucifer refuses to back down. "You know it's the truth," he says, his voice once more going softer. "But it wasn't your fault, John. No one can keep going forever. "

Even though his eyes are closed John can feel the other man move in front of him and can hear him crouch down. John's hands move up to his hair and his fingers tighten around the bangs.

"You were not able to set things right alone," Sherlock's voice says to him kindly. "But now I am here to help you."

John raises his head and looks into the grey-blue-green eyes of his best friend. The blood is glistening in the dim light.

"How?" he asks, his voice threatening to break. "How the hell could you help me with anything?"

"I look like him because I have no other choice," Lucifer says. "I don't have a body on this world. I am merely an incorporeal being, forced to drift around." He smiles again. "I need a body to walk this Earth, and I need a body to help you too."

John stares at him, his mind whirring. His thoughts had already arrived to a conclusion but he couldn't yet believe them.

"What the hell are you asking," he says.

"I need a vessel, John," Lucifer says. "And only rare ones will do. I cannot choose just anyone of the commoners going living their meaningless lives on this planet. You are one of the only ones that are suited."

John laughs aloud then and sits back on the chair. Lucifer straightens and looks at him with expressionless face.

"You cannot possibly expect me to agree. You're the bloody _Devil_ , why the hell would I do anything to help you, let alone _that_?"

"So because I am who I am you will not help me?" Lucifer lets out a laugh, and John feels sick in his stomach at how much it sounds like Sherlock's usual laugh. "Because everything is black and white, the devil is evil and the good is infinitely good. Tell me John, what has _God_ ever done for you? Ever done for anyone?"

The Sherlock-lookalike stares down at him. "God is the one who has abandoned you all here, to suffer in each other's teeth. He is the one who allows humans to torment one another. I have been locked away, not being able to do anything for anyone. So tell me, John, who is really the one you should be angry with here?"

John squeezes his eyes shut. "I'd really much like to wake up now," he says.  
Sherlock's voice drifts through the space around him. "So do all who live in a nightmare, John. Most of them cannot change it, but you can."

John holds hands over his ears and thinks _Wake up wake up please wake up_.

He doesn't know how long he does that, but when he opens his damp, aching eyes daylight is slithering in through the curtains and he is still sitting in his armchair.

Sherlock is nowhere to be seen.

He does his morning routines on autopilot and carries through the day. He thinks last night was just a horrible dream and that it won't repeat itself.

 

He is, of course, wrong.

 

It carries on through the whole week.

Each night he wakes up to find Lucifer looking like Sherlock's dead body sitting by his bed, or in the armchair, or on the sofa. Each night his friend's deep voice asks him for help, tries to reason him, offer comfort, telling it will all be over once he agrees.

He tells him no every night, willing himself to wake up. But he cannot wake up, and each time it feels like days until he finally gets his wish and wakes up to meet the new day.

He works, he goes to Tesco's when he needs food, takes long walks. But in the evening he always ends up back on 221B and it's like he steps right back into the nightmare, like the whole flat is now only a horrible dream he cannot wake up from.

Or, he thinks as he sits in his armchair sipping tea one evening, it's starting to be more and more like his life outside the flat, in the sunshine or rain, in the busy streets of London – as if _that_ is the dream, and this is his reality. And he cannot escape.

He goes to see his therapist, and Ella eyes him with suspicion as he insists he is fine. For the whole meeting he is aching to spill it all out, to tell everything. _I'm becoming insane. I don't know what to do._

_Please help._

But in the end he does not, because he fears more than anything that they'll lock him up but the nightmares won't stop, that Sherlock/Lucifer will still keep haunting him and then he'll have nowhere to escape.

So he keeps his mouth shut and returns to Baker Street, Ella's worried eyes burned to his mind.

 

**Three.**

_"I have news."_

_"Goddamnit Cas! Where the hell have you been?"_

_"Dean, that is blasphemy. I have come to tell you I have found them."_

_"Found who?"_

 

When John has just retreated to his bedroom he hears a noise downstairs.

A _thump_ , and muffled words.

He snatches his gun from the drawer and starts to sneak down the stairs. He knows the ones that won't creak and skips those that would alert of his presence. He stops for a moment behind the door before pushing it open.

He freezes at the doorway and stares into the flat.

There are three men in the living room. At his arrival they all turn to look at him with caution.

One of them is _tall_ , so tall that he would have towered even over Sherlock, and has longish, shaggy brown hair. The second man is shorter though still much taller than John and has his hair cropped short. He's wearing a sturdy leather jacket and from the way he is holding a hand near his side John knows he has a gun. The last man is dark-haired and is wearing a long beige trench coat. He has unsettling eyes.

John stares at them, and they stare back.

"John Watson?" Leather Jacket asks with an American accent.

John's eyes narrow minutely and his grip of the Browning tightens, the firearm still securely held behind his thigh.

"Who is asking?" he says curtly, keeping his gaze mainly on Leather Jacket fellow. "How the hell did you get in?"

No one answers, and instead everyone continues to regard him warily. Like he could go raving mad at them at any moment.

"Look," Tall Guy starts, "we just wanna talk, okay?"

_Not a good start, buddy_ , John thinks.

Trench Coat stares at him like he could see his brain through his eyes.

"He hasn't said yes yet," he says in a low gruff voice. Leather Jacket shoots a look at him.

Alarms go screaming in John's head and in one swift movement he has drawn the Browning up and steadily points it at the three men.

There are currently two voices screaming in his head, John the Doctor and John the Soldier. The Doctor is shouting at him to be reasonable, to understand that he just might be a little unstable and quite certainly going nuts and possibly dangerous to himself and others. The Doctor's voice is, however, being drowned out by the booming urgency of the Soldier. There are three unknown men in the flat, at least one (maybe more) of them has a gun and they possibly know something about his hallucinations of the bloody devil visiting him in his dreams.

The Soldier is winning.

Tall Guy hurries to raise his hands in a placating gesture. Leather Jacket's hand moves like lighting towards his back and in his mind John can just see the gun tucked in the back of those jeans. His aim settles between the man's eyes and he freezes, hand halfway to grab his own gun.

John's eyes are nailed to the hazel gaze of Leather Jacket and he keeps the gun firmly pointed at the man's forehead. Leather Jacket stares back at him, a defiant glint in his eyes.

"Let's all just calm down," Tall Guy tries, clearly seeing this can end very badly at any second.

"If you go for that gun you'll get a bullet between the eyes before you can blink, mate," John says with a low voice, with the same tone someone could state out 'If you drink too much coffee in the evening you will not be able to sleep tonight'.

Trench Coat tilts his head. When John blinks he has disappeared.

He stares, startled, at the now two men in living room. There's a nasty feeling settling in his stomach. Is this a hallucination too? Was the Trench Coat man even real? Is _any_ one of them real?

Then his instincts are screaming at him to turn and he starts to whirl around, and sees Trench Coat standing right behind him, staring at him with the unnaturally blue eyes.

Two fingers touch his forehead and everything goes black.

 

He wakes up on the couch. When he remembers _why_ he had been unconscious he sits up immediately.

The three men are still in the room. Leather Jacket is sitting in John's armchair, and the Tall guy is standing beside him. The man in the trench coat is standing in front of the doors. None of them is too close to him, as if giving him space.

John slowly sits properly on the couch, his eyes flickering between the strangers.

"Sorry about that," Leather Jacket says. "We really just want to talk, but that was going to the wrong direction."

"Where's my gun," John asks.

Tall Guy steps forward and John can see he's offering the Browning back to him.

"The bullets are in the kitchen," he says. "So are our guns, so no one can threaten to shoot anyone, right?"

John cautiously takes his gun back. It feels light without the bullets but it is still a comforting weight in his hands.

"Okay then," he says. "If you want this all to be civil maybe you should consider telling me who the hell you are."

"Right, right," Tall Guy says. "My name is Sam Winchester. That is my brother Dean," he nods at Leather Jacket. "And he is Castiel."

John turns his head to look at the man in trench coat who apparently has a very weird name. "What kind of name is that?"

"My name," Castiel says in his gruff voice, his head tilting a bit. "I am an angel of the Lord."

And that is just too much for him to handle.

"Oh my god," John says and buries his face in his hands. He feels like he's going to break down here and now. Usually he can tell when he's having the horrible nightmares of Lucifer visiting him with Sherlock's face and Sherlock's clothes and blood, but he really thought he was awake now.

"Whoa," Tall Guy – Sam Winchester – says and steps forwards, kneeling next to the sofa.

There is a fluttering sound and John looks up to see that Castiel too now stands in front of him.

"This is not a dream, John Watson," he says and his eyes are _really_ blue, John thinks stupidly. "These men are real and I am an angel, and we will try to help you."

"Help me," John says and it's not really a question but more of a tired repetition of the words.

"We know who's been visiting you," Dean Winchester says, having also stood up and standing now behind the sofa table, arms crossed and face serious.

"You probably thought you we're going insane, right?" Sam Winchester says, a humourless smile making an appearance on his face. "You're not."

John stares him for a while before saying: "I'm not sure if that's bad news or good ones."

Sam smiles sadly. "Probably bad ones."

He sighs. "Of course." Then, because he really needs a cuppa, he asks: "Tea, anyone?"  
And without waiting for an answer he gets up and walks to the kitchen to put on the kettle.

 

After some ten minutes they are all sitting in the living room, mugs of tea in their hands.

Sam is apparently enjoying his cup, taking a sip and smiling a bit. Dean, however looks like he doesn't much appreciate tea drinking. Castiel seems like he doesn't get at all what he's supposed to do and only stares into his mug.

"Cas, you're supposed to drink it," Sam says after a moment.

Castiel looks up, a frown on his face. "I do not require sustenance."

"Just humour us, okay?"

The angel's frown deepens and he takes a cautious sip. John isn't sure what he thinks of it, but after a moment he takes another so maybe the angel thinks it's okay, then.

An angel is sitting in his living room drinking tea. John feels a bit faint.

"So," Dean says, setting the tea mug on the coffee table with a grimace. "I think you know why we're here."

"Not really," John mutters. "But I can guess."

"Would you tell us what has happened?" Sam says, his eyes kind.

John sighs. Then he begins.

 

It doesn't take long before the flood gates are fully open and he's telling everything, starting from the death of his best friend and the weeks after that. He tells about the feeling of uneasiness, about the violin and the blood, about the skull and seeing Sherlock for the first time. He tells about his conversations with Lucifer.

He tells how he's not sure if he can keep going on.

After he has been speaking what feels like hours he sits there exhausted and watches as the three men have retreated into the kitchen to converse with hushed tones.

He runs his hands over his face and lets out a shaky sigh. It felt good, he realizes, to let it all out. Before this he had been all alone in this. Now he feels like he could actually get through this.

"Here."

He looks up and sees Sam holding out another mug of tea. John slowly takes it.

"I haven't made much tea," Sam says, shrugging sheepishly. "At least not in the British way, but maybe that's not total poison."

John takes a sip. It tastes horrible and he tells that to Sam. The man laughs and shakes his head.

"Well, I tried," he says and sits down.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Castiel and Dean Winchester walk from the kitchen to the living room.

"It really is Lucifer who has been visiting you," Castiel says gravely. "He cannot affect the world without a vessel, so he is forced to appear in dreams and try to persuade the potential vessel to help him. He is an angel, after all, and he cannot possess anyone without their absolute permission."

"So if I don't say yes he won't get to me?" John asks though he already knows the answer. This would have all been over since the beginning if that wasn't the case.

"Yes." Castiel's eyes feel like they are boring into his very soul. "But he is persistent. He is the Devil, the master in deception and manipulation."

John lets out a broken laugh. "Great news for me, right." He takes another sip of the terrible tea. "So, there's no way to... I don't know, stop it?" _Please, let there be a way._

He knows the answer even before he has finished uttering the words. The looks on their faces tell him everything he needs to know.

"We are doing our best to end the bastard for good," Dean Winchester grumbles, "but, well, he _is_ the devil. It's really not easy."

Castiel, too, shakes his head grimly. "There is no way to stop him visiting you in your dreams. I could make it so he cannot find your physical location, but the dreams wouldn't stop. And then he would know that we have visited you. "

"Oh. I see," John says and rubs his face with both hands. He leaves them there, ending up burying his face in his hands.

"As long as you keep refusing him, he cannot affect this world," Castiel says, an undertone of urgency in his voice.

"Well, bad news for you," John says hollowly, "but I really don't know how much longer it's going to remain like that."

And isn't it horrifying to say it aloud. He closes his eyes and slowly breathes out. "Why me?"

"It is because of the bloodlines," Castiel says. "You are one of the only ones suitable for him to use."

"Wait..." John starts, a terrible though drifting in his head. "Does that mean that my sister...?"

Oh, _God_.

"Harriet Watson will not do," Castiel says grimly. "Her body is too much weakened by her choice of substance abuse. He couldn't hold on to her for long enough to accomplish anything."

"Good, that's good," John breathes, because the absolute last thing he wants is for Harry to be burdened with the same thing. Funny that it is her alcoholism that saves her in the end.

Then another thought appears. It is very worrying that it doesn't really scare him how calmly he thinks of it, turns it around in his mind as if it is a particularly peculiar, interesting object.

"And what if I'm dead?"

A deadly, dangerous object. But he has been afraid for so long already...

The three men seem to draw a collective breath.

"There is a good chance that won't work either," Sam says quietly. "He probably is able to resurrect you."

John laughs again. It's an ugly, ugly sound. He really doesn't like this new world he has fallen into. Even the peace of death has been robbed of him.

"Then what am I going to do?" he asks, and his voice is nearly a whisper.

None of them answers. None of them can.

 

In the end, Sam clasps his shoulder (the good one, John wonders if he noticed or if it's just a coincidence. Fifty-fifty chances, after all) and looks him in the eyes. John feels ridiculously short, and for a first time in what feels like years, smiles a bit for real at the thought.

"I know it's hell, okay?" Sam says, and then snorts."Like, literally hell. Trust me, I know. But... Hold on, okay? We are working on it."

_But for how long?_ John wants to ask. _A week? A month? A year?_

He nods instead, a curt military-like nod.

"Good luck, then," he says. Sam smiles and lets go of his shoulder and starts walking to the others.

John feels an enormous urge to stop them, to beg them to stay with him _because he cannot bear to be alone again._

The three men bid their farewell with promises to return. Castiel puts his hands on the Winchesters' shoulders and they all disappear.

He is alone again.

Alone in his own hell.

 

**Four.**

After the meeting with an angel and two strange brothers John begins to face his current existence with a new kind of determination. He now knows he's not going crazy, but dealing with something that is much, _much_ bigger than him. Now there is an even greater reason for him to hold on, to keep saying no to temptations every single night.

He wonders what Sherlock would say about it all. Probably snort derisively at his weakness, he thinks somewhat absently as he makes himself tea in the quiet flat. Sherlock would probably hate it all, the angels and the Devil, all those things that cannot be handled with reason and logic, cannot be picked apart in his mind. Anyway, Sherlock probably wouldn't appreciate the rules of the game abruptly changing so thoroughly. He'd probably resent it. He _would_ resent it.

He imagines Sherlock deducing Castiel the angel and gives a watery smile to his teacup.

For a moment it helps to think those thoughts, and to know there are people out there in the world trying to help him, even if a bit indirectly. And to know he _too_ is helping in his own way.

But optimistic thoughts can only help you so far, and in the end it doesn't take but a couple of endless nights for his determination to start showing cracks. Because there, in the dark, quiet flat it's so very easy to forget that the outside world exists at all.

And even if it did exist, what would it matter?

It's not like he is a part of it anymore.

 

"It could all be over," Lucifer says that night, sitting in Sherlock's chair as John paces around the flat, trying to will himself to wake up. "Just let me help and it'll be better, he'll get justice, I promise. I am an angel and I don't lie, and I will keep my promises."

"Just say yes and he'll get justice."

"Just say yes, and you'll get peace."

 

He tells him no.

But every day he is slipping closer to the darkness, he knows. Because no matter how stubborn he is, no matter how sure he is that he is making the right choice, the _right thing to do_ , the nights are awfully long and the days are lonely and short, and there in the darkness where the voice of his best friend is asking him to _Help me, John_ , he cannot remember as clearly why is he doing all this again.

A few days pass. There is no sign of Castiel or the Winchesters. John wonders whether they are still trying to find out an answer at all.

 

Mrs. Hudson calls him. He listens to her prattle and does his best to chat back a bit, even if his attempts are pitiful at best. Mrs. H notices it too, of course she does. That's probably why she sounds so tentative, apologetic, and guilty as she tells him that her sister is still ill, so she'll have to stay for a few days longer, but that's it and then she'll be home again.

"Don't worry about it," John insists, because he is not _that_ pitiful that he will tear a poor old woman from her unwell sister. "I'll be fine. You stay as long as you need."

Mrs. Hudson lets out a soft noise that sounds very much like a small sob. She assures him she'll be back before he even notices.

That night he haphazardly packs a small bag with randomly picked up clothes and necessary toiletries. He snatches up his wallet, phone and charger, slips into his jacket, locks the doors and leaves.

An hour and a half later he finds himself in a small hostel on the other side of London. The area is not overly pleasant, but far from the worst ones. He throws his bag to the floor and sits heavily down to the creaky bed.

He doesn't know what he is trying to attempt. It's not like Castiel didn't make it clear that moving places will not help anything. But he still cannot help but feel a sliver of hope in a new place, in a different place. He has never been in this hostel before. Baker Street is now only a set for a recurring nightmare. This place is new, and maybe, John thinks as he goes to sleep after the midnight, maybe the angel was wrong and this will help.

Maybe he'll be left alone.

 

An hour later he opens his eyes and the room is dark and quiet, as if it was cut off from the outside world entirely. He opens his eyes and the thing wearing Sherlock's body is back, standing beside the bed with his hands in the pockets of his trousers.  
The Devil smiles down at him, shaking his head.

"Stop running John," Sherlock's voice tells him gently. "It will be _so much easier_ after that. Haven't you been through enough already?

"Isn't it your turn to rest?"

 

When the morning comes he returns to Baker Street, eyes empty and face grey.  
He feels like it has been years since Sherlock decided to off himself and dive down from a rooftop. Decades, maybe. He stands in the living room, staring blankly at the skull. It stares back, grinning. John gets a mad impulse to snatch the thing up and throw it out and watch it break apart on the street below.

But that would feel like losing something important and irreplaceable. It would feel like losing. And in the end, it wouldn't solve a thing.

He takes his bag upstairs and puts the dirty clothes in the laundry.

 

That day he goes to the pub with Greg, drinks too much and breaks down sobbing.

"Every night, Greg, I see him every night." Because _technically_ that isn't a lie, only a half-truth. Because he _has_ been seeing Sherlock's body every night. It's what is inside that is wrong and decidedly not-Sherlock.

Lestrade pats his back, a sad, sad look in his eyes.

"We all do, mate," he says, voice rough. "Half of the time I'm dead sure I can hear him scoffing behind my back when I'm at work. Appalled at my slow pace." Greg shakes his head. "It'll get better. Now it feels like it won't, but it will."

John knows otherwise. It won't, it really won't.

 

That night he prays to Castiel. But the angel must be busy, because there's no reply.

 

**Five.**

John Watson opens his eyes and the end begins.

He slowly comes to, disoriented, blinking his eyes open. The world swims unsteadily in his vision until it clears into the shadowed image of his bedroom ceiling. The lights are off and the only illumination comes from the window that isn't fully covered with the thick brown-red curtain.

His body feels stiff and heavy, as if his muscles are slowly remembering how to operate again. His hand twitches and he tries to turn his head, and does so, with great effort though.

He tries to remember how he got to sleep, because he is fully clothed and lying on top of the covers, with his legs uncomfortably hanging off the bed. His leg is throbbing again, the phantom pain once more returned.

He gets a feeling, that awful feeling that something horrible has happened and he's just not remembering it yet.

His hand twitches again and feels something cold and metallic in its still little numb grasp.

He freezes, and slowly tilts his head back to look at the wall behind him.

A warm-brown wall with a large red stain to it, not yet even dried up. Right behind him.

And he remembers.

Remembers the tiredness, the weariness, the nightmares and the whispers that had carried on an on, crumbling his resolve every passing night.

He remembers the haze of alcohol, the feel of the Browning in his hand, the thought of _There's one place he maybe won't get to me._

He remembers tightening his finger over the trigger.

He doesn't remember the gunshot.

He scrambles up then, his hands coming up to run over his face, under his jaw, across the back of his head. But there is no wound, no blood, no sign that he had only a moment ago tried to blow off his brain.

Going by the splatter of blood behind him, he had succeeded.

He _had succeeded._

And now he's standing in the middle of his room, in the darkness, in the quiet lonely flat.

His breathing grows loud and ragged in the silence as he bends nearly double, trying to control the blooming despair in his gut. He nearly leaps for his gun again, fully prepared to empty the whole goddamn magazine full of bullets into his brain. But Sherlock's (the real one's) voice snorts in his head, drawling _Really, John? The evidence is right in front of you. What do you expect to change when you repeat the experiment?_

His trembling breaths turn into ugly wet sobs that shudder through his whole body.

And then he knows.

There are two options:

1) He is mad, finally lost his mind, hallucinating, and nothing he does really matters because it's not real.

2) It's real. It's real and he cannot get away.

He thought he could get away. At first he thought he could outlast it. Then he thought he could outsmart it. Then he thought he'd escape for good.

And it hadn't worked.

Nothing will work.

Except...

He sits on the bed, head in his hands as he finally shouts:

"Yes! Can you hear me, you bastard? I SAY YES!"

And the room is filled with light.

 

Twelve minutes later, an angel appears in the middle of the living room of 221B.

Castiel stands there in the oppressing silence.

He closes his eyes.

He has failed.

 

Some six months later, Sherlock bloody Holmes marches back to London, the remnants of Moriarty's criminal web falling apart in his wake.

He returns to Baker Street in one big swirl of that ridiculous coat.

No one has time to tell that the other occupant is not there anymore.

And that he's nowhere to be found.

 

Some five months after that, a word appears into a brick wall in a small town in the United States.

It reads " **CROATOAN** ".

After that, it's the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> There will possibly be a sequel of sorts for this story - if I manage to write it, that is. There are still things I'm uncertain about.
> 
> Posted also on Fanfiction.net on my account TheShatterpoint. This version is slightly edited
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave feedback before you go.


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